Mary Riddell is a columnist and a political interviewer for the Daily Telegraph. She writes on topics ranging from family to foreign policy and is particularly interested in criminal justice. Her focus is what is going on, for better or for worse, in the Parliamentary Labour Party.

Adam Rickwood's death is a cause for national shame

Spare a thought for Adam Rickwood, the youngest child ever to die in penal custody in Britain. Adam was 14 when he hanged himself in his cell at Hassockfield Secure Training Centre in Co Durham. Yesterday an inquest jury found that he had been unlawfully restrained in a way that contributed to his suicide.

The nose distraction technique, a short, painful blow dealt to Adam was the last indignity of a life beset by troubles. He was a vulnerable and disturbed boy with a history of self harm, suicidal thinking and feelings of hopelessness. The second inquest since he died six years ago heard a grim litany of the institutional errors that led to his lonely end in a child jail far from home.

Last year a shocking manual of restraint techniques was finally released by the government under the Freedom of Information Act after a long campaign by the Children's Rights Alliance of England, a charity which I chair. Changes have been put in place. But the government is still less than frank about the current guidelines. It has also been dilatory at taking steps drastically to reduce the numbers of children, many of them non-violent, held in custody.

Adam's mother, Carol Pounder, says she feels that she has finally got some justice for her son. But it has taken a protracted legal battle, including a flawed first inquest and three judicial reviews finally to expose the failings that led to his death. Inquest, the campaigning charity, and Adam's family have never given up. Yesterday their persistence was vindicated.

Even so, this is a shameful episode exposing the brutal treatment accorded to some of the most vulnerable children in a country whose fondness for jailing minors is a matter of national disgrace. Too slowly and too painfully, justice has been done. Whether lessons have been fully learned is far from clear.